Art in an Octagon: The Schinkel Pavilion Berlin

The Schinkel Pavilon in Berlin-Mitte is perhaps Germany?s most unconventional art association. Where GDR nomenklatura once held cocktail parties, now Douglas Gordon, Cyprien Gaillard and Isa Genzken hold exhibitions. ... more

28/06/2005

Merkel's new middle

The rejection of the supervised society needs a new self-confident middle class. By Paul Nolte

Does anyone remember? Just seven years ago victory was won by a
Red-Green (SPD-Green Party) project for social liberalisation and ecological modernisation,
committed to the joint agendas of the 68er movement and the new social
movements of the 70s and 80s. But the victories of autumn 1998 and four years later were also won by a Gerhard Schröder
and an SPD that had successfully pandered to the "new middle" of German
society. Drawing inspiration from the
British example, the Social Democrats courted the aspiring middle classes in a dynamic service and
information society, the new high-ranking employee elite, and the
league of IT engineers, graphic designers and teaching professionals.
The green coalition partner, soon to be sneered at as the new party for
top earners,
was already well established in such circles. The
programmatic term "new middle" aimed at winning voters from Helmut
Kohl's conservative middle. But the SPD wanted more â namely to prove
that hard-working and not poorly paid people ranging from young to
middle-aged could be won over by progressive politics. And more still:
they wanted to become the party representing a responsible society that
was beyond just
contentedly looking after its own interests.

This memory has not just faded, it has been eradicated. There's no point
talking about the middle, either new or old, any longer, because there
is no such thing, now that society has polarised
so dramatically. That
at least is the impression which has increasingly taken root in public
debate and collective consciousness in recent years. Our description of
the society we live in has changed enormously. Instead of
being led morally and economically by self-confident middle classes,
Germany, when it looks in the mirror, sees itself torn in two extremes.
There seems to be nothing left except the unemployed and the 'locust'
classes, and in the middle a gaping void. (SPD chairman Franz Müntefering recently caused a sensation by comparing international hedge funders to locusts.) Anyone
looking at Germany from the outside must have the impression that
people on unemployment money and people heading that way in the near
future make up the majority of the population. So dark is the mood.
What is going on? We should not just fixate on the possible
cabinet of the future, without first asking some questions about the society looking to bring about this change of government.

There
is one thing that without a doubt belongs on the credit side. In recent
years the media and the politicians have stopped covering up and
sweet-talking social conditions. The black square spanning job market
crisis, family crisis, immigration and new mass culture is developing
new zones of marginality, poverty and lack of opportunities. Mind you,
these have nothing to do with the SPD-Greenlabour market reform programme,"Hartz IV". They have been developing for
two decades or more. The going term to describe this is the "new
underclass" and the problem is multi-facetted, with underclass TV being
the latest aspect of it to spark heated discussion. Public attention has been
so successfully turned around that we now only talk about our society
in terms of poverty and under-classes here, and
million incomes there. But one now wishes the government's recently
announced second report on poverty and wealth would be accompanied by a
middle class report, which would deflect attention back to the
widespread and completely normal levels of wealth in the Federal
Republic. The debate about Hartz IV took this distorted perspective to
new levels. In a situation in which everyone firmly believes in mass
poverty, the government is not even capable of coming up with an effective
reply to the accusation that they are deliberately
trying to impoverish vast swathes of the population.

The real
dilemma, which is increasingly becoming a fundamental political problem
of the first order, stems not from the diagnosis but from the
treatment: it has to do with counter strategies, interventions into
society. That one cannot tackle new forms of poverty, for example among
the much referred to "less educated classes", with the classical
instruments of redistribution is a lesson quickly learned. It is much
more an issue of strengthening people â as the new SPD slogan says â
and providing them as early in life as possible with the cultural
resources that enable them to lead independent and responsible lives in
the widest sense. These skills range from earning capabilities to raising children and being able to feed them properly.
On the horizon we see a community-minded group of responsible citizens
who don't need state care and supervision, and have the will and skill to ascend to the middle of society.

But
unfortunately this state cannot come about on its own. No, first of all it
seems to need, and this is precisely the problem, intervention in the
form of state regulation, education and supervision. In the meantime
we have pinpointed so many deficits and problem zones, from smoking
teens to parents incapable of raising their kids, that the sum of the
proposed solutions threatens to push ad absurdum the objective of a
freer and more responsible society. Because the process of healing
society with new forms of intervention has long reached far beyond the
narrow slice of people who are dependent on support â the majority of
society also has to approve the new forms of supervision and
education. Even though personal responsibility has been proclaimed
essential in everything from educational policies and consumer
protection to health policies, it is no longer required. The citizens
are no longer able to cope on their own, so it's up
to the state to maintain the status quo. So everyone
has to be told what food to eat, that they're not allowed to smoke, and
the bizarre climax of the debate is that three year olds are legally
required to attend school. Once upon a time Red-Green stood for a
project of liberalisation. Are we submitting ourselves to the new
project of a supervised society? And does this rhetorical
self-impoverishment lead anywhere other than a dead end?

It is a commonplace in Germany that elections are decided by the
middle. By that is meant the pragmatic liberal in-between zone that tends
either a little to the Left or a little to the Right, depending on the prevailing zeitgeist.
Whether we are now seeing
a new conservative mood is questionable. Angela Merkel's CDU is not as
alluring to voters as Helmut Kohl's was in 1982. And there is no longer
a
clearly defined conservative wing in the Union â the lines of conflict
are now differently drawn. Yet the upcoming federal elections will
certainly be fought out in the middle: for the terrain of the social
middle so successfully wooed by Schröder and Fischer in the early
years of SPD-Green leadership.

That is why it is illusory to think that in order to win on September
18, the parties will have to outdo each other in reaching out to the
underprivileged, the long-term unemployed, the great new underclass. The real dynamic comes from the middle
classes, as was impressively demonstrated by the recent elections in
North-Rhine Westphalia. While public attention was focused on the
state's crisis zones, on the Ruhr Area - the former industrial heart of
Germany - and on the attractiveness of the CDU for disappointed workers,
the fate of the state, and with it the Red-Green coalition, was decided
elsewhere: outside the Ruhr Area and outside the big cities, in the
affluent and growing suburban sprawl along the Rhine, as well as in
Eastern Westphalia. In the Neuss and Mettmann districts to the west and
east of the state capital Düsseldorf, and in the prosperous districts of Gütersloh and Rhine-Sieg, the CDU made above average gains
of around ten percent among middle class swing voters.

A decisive question is what the parties will offer this group of
voters. The SPD will have the hardest time of it. For although people
do not want to reject the Red-Green project outright, they are also fed
up with a stagnant society increasingly looking like a sad bunch of
losers whining for more state paternalism, instead of finally taking the bull by the horns making real changes. But how should
chairman Franz Müntefering's SPD rejuvenate its concept for a new middle in
coming weeks? The Greens have it easier, being the party of
the altruistic middle-class whose hands are unsoiled by the affairs of the
business world. They have been able to ride the remarkable twin horses
of appealing to wealthy voters as a party of the weak and socially
disenfranchised. Yet as the vote in North-Rhine Westphalia shows, that
will no longer suffice to win over undogmatic younger voters who didn't
benefit from the classic Green socialisation experiences of student
revolt and the peace movement.

Still, it will not be easy for the opposition parties to win over the middle
classes. A battle has already begun and insinuations are flying that
the group which
best serves the naked interests of the wallet will
have its nose in
front. It is imperative to reorient the German political model more
firmly toward the middle classes, the active, relatively
well-educated and well-situated majority. But that by no means implies
that these groups believe a new government will bring them relief above
everything else. For
them the touchstone will be a serious tax policy
whose first criterion must be: no sleazy promises of tax cuts! For
while the brunt of the income tax burden will be borne by them - even
after
the tax reforms of the Red-Green government - the predominent mindset of
these potential swing voters vis-a-vis the state is not one of disdain.
Because there is more at stake here than the numbers on a payslip. Also at stake is the search for a social model that could replace
that of Red-Green.

So the question of the middle involves more than the strategic question
about majorities, or the next majority in Germany. It aims to find a
strategic concept for society. Should this concept aim at the social
margins, or take root in the middle and radiate from there? For the
long-neglected middle classes it represents a chance, but also a
challenge.
Because they have made themselves comfortable in the slipstream created by the public polarisation.
But their responsibilities will include more than (hopefully) paying
taxes, cultivating their bodies and keeping their cars and gardens
tidy. No reform will be successful unless Germany can shake off the torpor, in which a passive population expects the
state to provide everything and sloughs off all responsibility onto
the politicians. If the new middle does not take on an active role in a
responsible and mature society, very little will be gained even with a
change in government.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Who actually owns "intellectual property"?Â The German media that defend the concept of intellectual property as "real" property are the first to appropriate such rights, and they are using this idea as a defensive weapon. With lawmakers extending copyright laws and new structures emerging on the internet, intellectual property poses a serious challenge to the public domain. A survey of the German media landscape by Thierry Chervelread more

Wednesday 4th January, 2012

Why the Russian youth have tolerated the political situation in their country for so long and why they are no longer tolerant. The poet Natalia Klyuchareva explains the background to the protests on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on December 10th. Image: Leonid Faerbergread more

Tuesday 20 December, 2011

Thanks to Radoslaw Sikorski's speech in Berlin, Poland has at last joined the big European debate about restructuring the EU in connection with the euro crisis. The "European Reformation" advocated by Germany does not mean that the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation will be established in Europe, but instead â let us hope â the Republic of Europe. By Adam Krzeminskiread more

Tuesday 13 December, 2011

Filmmaker and theatre director Andres Veiel disagrees with the parallels currently being drawn between left-wing and right-wing violence in Germany. The RAF is the wrong model for the Zwickau neo-Nazi group, the so-called "Brown Army Faction" responsible for a series of murders of Turkish small business owners. Unlike the RAF, this group never publicly claimed responsibility for their crimes. Veiel is emphatic - you have to look at the biographies of the perpetrators. An interview with Heike Karen Runge.read more

Monday 14 November, 2011

In response to the arson attack on the offices of the Parisian satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on November 2, Danish critic and semiotician Frederik Stjernfelt is nauseated by the opinions voiced against the publication, especially in the British and American media. Why don't they see that Islamism is right-wing extremism?read more

Monday 10 October, 2011

Activist and author, Andri Snaer Magnason is among the Icelandic guests of honor at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair. His book and film "Dreamland" is both an ecological call to action and a polemic. "The politicians took one of the most beautiful parts of Iceland and offered it tounscrupulous companies," says the author in a critique of his native country. By Daniela Zinser read more

Monday 3 October 2011

In their book "Lügendes Licht" (lying light) Thomas Worm and Claudia Karstedt explore the darker side of the EU ban on incandescent bulbs. From disposal issues to energy efficiency, the low-energy bulb is not necessarily a beacon of a greener future. By Brigitte Werneburg read more

Tuesday 30 August, 2011

The malice of the American media in the case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a symptom of sexual uptightness that borders on the sinister, and the feminists have joined forces with the religious Right to see it through. We can learn much from America, but not when it comes to the art of love.Â By Pascal Brucknerread more

Monday 22 August 2011

Published a year ago, the controversial book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" (Germany is doing away with itself) by former banker and Berlin Finance Senator Thilo Sarrazin sparked intense discussion. Hamed Abdel-Samad asks: what has the Sarrazin debate achieved beyond polarisation and insult? And how can Germany avoid cultivating its own classes of "future foreigners"?
read more

Wednesday 3 August, 2011

Germany's growing imbalance between economic and political competence is worsening the European crisis and indeed the crisis of Nato. The country has ceased to make any political signals at all and demonstrates a conspicuous lack of responsibility for what takes place beyond its own borders. This smug isolationism is linked to strains of old anti-Western and anti-political, anti-parliamentarian sentiment that is pure provincialism. By Karl Heinz Bohrerread more

Monday 11 April 2011

Budapestis shimmering with culture but Hungary's nationalist government is throwing its weight about in cultural life, effecting censorship through budget cuts and putting its own people in the top-level cultural positions. Government tolerance of hate campaigns against Jews and gays has provoked the likes of Andras Schiff, Agnes Heller, Bela Tarr and Andre Fischer to raise their voices in defence of basic human rights. But a lot of people are simply scared. By Volker Hagedornread more

Monday 28 March, 2011

A Dutch action group for free will wants to give all people the right to assisted suicide. But can this be achieved without us ending up somewhere we never wanted to go? Gerbert van Loenen has grave doubts.read more

Monday 21 February, 2011

Saying revolution and freedom is not the same as saying democracy,
respect for minorities, equal rights and good relations with
neighbouring nations. All this has yet to be achieved. We welcome the
Arab revolution and will continue to watch with our eyes open to the
potential dangers. By Andre Glucksmannread more

Friday 14 January, 2011

The French writer Pascal Bruckner wants to forbid a word. Which
sounds more like a typically German obsession. But for Bruckner,
"Islamophobia" is one of "those expressions which we dearly need to
banish from our vocabulary". One asks oneself with some trepidation
which other words we "dearly need" to get rid of: Right-wing populism?
Racism? Relativism? By Alan Posenerread more